Every place I have lived in the West, I’ve been fortunate enough to locate or stumble upon the rare or secretive creatures native to the locality, be they cougars, wolves, grizzly bears, lynx, otters, fisher, mink, pine marten, or badgers, even crossing paths with the shadowy wolverine on four separate occasions. So it was with confidence that I set out across eastern Montana and Wyoming in search of the amicable, diurnal rodents that call the prairie their home. Surely they must be thick out there. How hard could they be to ferret out? It’s not like I was searching for Bigfoot this time.

I combed hundreds of miles of what should be prime prairie dog habitat, scouring gravel back roads amid over-grazed cattle allotments and between functioning and defunct oil rigs, but found almost no sign of them. What I did find were prairie dog ghost towns and a lot…